The Sales Café

Here's something simple: how to read your customer's mind. Can you read it with certainty? Of course not. But can you read it with some insight? Absolutely.

Think about this for a moment: many of us rely on good psychics and fortune tellers who are right often enough to make a better living than most ordinary people. They're called stock analysts and brokers. When they're really good, we can make a fortune, or at least quite a few bucks on their predictions. How do they do it? There's nothing like a couple of well placed questions coupled with very good observation skills to predict the future.

What does this have to do with selling? Everything, really. The art of successful selling - and it most definitely is an art when it's successful - relies heavily on the skills of questioning and observation. We know that these are two pillars of selling, but what about before the sale, or aside from actual customer conversations?

Today, I'm going to focus on the most difficult customer mind-reading skill. This is the skill of preparation: studying public information, recognizing patterns, and making intelligent deductions (guesses) that more often than not allow you to peer into the mind of your customer before you ever meet them.
First, how do you prepare for a sales call? Do you psyche yourself up with positive self-talk? Do you spend your time on LinkedIn figuring out who the person is you're meeting and who you might know in common? Do you read 10-Ks and 10-Qs, shareholder letters and websites, competitive analysis and news reports?

Let's hope you're doing all of this and not winging it out there with all the other amateurs. Seriously - you are meeting at the buyer's pleasure, hoping to discover their needs and interests, so that you can earn the right to talk about your solutions. You need to be in the zone. You need to be on-message. And you need to be prepared. This is especially true during the opening minutes of an interaction with a buyer.

Download your customer's 10-Ks, 10-Qs and annual reports. In the management discussions and shareholder letters you will find your customer's view of the road behind and the road ahead - recent and long-term results, and short- and long- term goals. Did you know that you can also find out what your customer gets paid to do? Download the proxy statement and read the compensation committee report.

Now for the mind-reading part. What do the top executives get paid to do? What executive team (plus the direct reports, and the folks who report to those direct reports) ever focuses on anything other than what they get paid to do? The first answer gives you a significant glimpse into the mind of your customer. The second helps you check your assumptions.

While you're psyching yourself up and trolling LinkedIn for your next call, spend the time to research the public reporting and answer those two questions. Use your answers to prepare how you will explore your customer's interests when you meet them.

I'm interested to know how this works for you on your next few sales calls. If it does anything less than focus you and your customer on what's important to them and doesn't cause a few of your competitors to melt into the woodwork, I'll be very surprised.

This past week I had a very enlightening conversation with a friend, Steve Diller, who is a well known market strategy expert and the author of Making Meaning, about go-to-market strategies companies need to employ in this stage of the economic cycle. I think, as many of you will agree, that we seem to have turned the corner toward recovery, and that some, or most companies are starting to see improving sales. His view was that it is fifteen seconds past midnight, or thereabouts, on the new day of the economy and it's time to get prepared for the expansion that is coming next. I think that is a perfect assessment of where we are right now.

The last time the economy was in this exact spot, at least in Silicon Valley, was perhaps June 2002. As I look back over the the past seven years of client work, I see a clear pattern. Companies that got their sales planning together early, and whose sales process, systems, and methodology were in tune, came out of the box early and benefitted the most from the last expansion cycle and have survived the downturn relatively well. Those that dithered, or who tried to squeeze the last ounce from their tired old strategies, are dying. Let's learn from them.

Sales Executives! Your companies are entrusting the successful road through the sales recovery to you. Many things you thought you knew are now in question. And we all know the world has changed in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways since late 2007. Most certainly, the sales methodologies of the big expansion will not work in the recovery phases of the cycle, or not work as well. B2B and B2C buying relationships are greatly altered today. Who would have thought that your credibility may rest in Linked-In or Facebook?

A solid vision, structured sales planning, and a healthy dose of Outside-In sales methodology is critical, perhaps more than anything else right now. If you want to take full advantage of the recovery, make sure you have these pieces in place, or get help from those who can help you most. Most of us prosper on the way up, so throw the covers off your head; it's very early in the morning but it's time to do something.

With the recession in full tilt, businesses are imploding everyday. But implosion has some positives. Dilapidated systems, out of date process, unsafe business practices get updated and values recover. Improvements come out of the dust and rubble with planning and appropriate reactions to the current state. 

Have you watched any of your customers' business implode? If you've been paying attention, you know the reasons businesses are failing.

• Specifically, what business challenge is hurting your customer?  (“The recession” is not a specific-enough answer.)
• How would you counsel the leaders in the organization to take a different path?
• What is threatening the leaders of the organization?
• How would your service help minimize or eliminate these threats?
• What are the long term benefits?
• How can your customer implement your service and realize benefits quickly? 
  

Consultants are by nature optimists. We see the silver lining that's hidden from our client's view, or one that's seen by very few in our client's companies. Those of us who work with sales organizations inevitably focus on growth - customer acquisition, expansion, and extension. Indeed these things are paramount to long term success (and this feeds our optimistic nature)!

But what to make of these times? On the one hand, we are hammered by bad news. There's plenty of it to go around, a real treasure trove of miasma with its own special mantra: "we've never been here before." (True if you were born after 2002!) On the other hand, hidden below the clouds are changes and innovations, both subtle and massive, new businesses and business models surfacing from nowhere, audacious moves by companies with a bit of cash to spend. 

The truth is that many companies aren't growing by leaps and bounds. The bottom of the economic cycle will take out many companies and those of us unlucky enough to work for them will need to find new jobs or careers.  The other truth behind this recession, like all of them, is that most companies will survive and thrive again. How they get there will be through regrouping, re-engineering, and reorganizing, and the better ones will use this time to innovate. 

Perhaps the news is just the news. And perhaps we've all been here before, too. And perhaps those that focus on this renewal today will prosper sooner rather than later. That's the silver lining!

If you run a sales department or a sales region, you already know that the more you can think and act like an entrepreneur, the better your organization performs. There’s a very handy tool available that keeps you in this mindset and helps you reach your short- and long-term objectives. It’s called the One Page Business Plan.

What CEOs, CFOs, and business owners have known for years is that this tool defines your operating plan and makes it very easy to execute amidst all of the usual complexities that confront them on a day-to-day basis. The utility for VPs of Sales and their management teams is obvious. The approach is simple. The results are profound. You start by answering these five questions:

1. What type of sales organization will you build over the next 3 years?
2. Why does your organization exist; what is its purpose? What promise will you make to your employees and/or customers?
3. What will you measure?
4. How will you attain those objectives?
5. What projects need to be completed this year in order for you to attain those objectives?

The big question I have for you, dear reader, is what other questions are there? Everything in your world – finance, business process, positioning, competing effectively, hiring right, internal operations – will be addressed by answering these five questions. Of course, there are many elements to your answer and you will have 7-9 of them for questions 3, 4, and 5. Once you have answered these, you have a concise plan – one that is easily communicated to the executive team, and to the board. And if you plug this plan into the front end of your organization’s systems, processes, and projects, you’ve created a profound focusing tool for you and the teams you manage.

For several years, we have used the One Page Business Plan as the starting point with all of our sales clients. Every project has exceeded our clients’ expectations and delivered tangible and significant results. Here at ELA, we are all experienced coaches and consultants, we know that the One Page Business Plan is the one tool that has made the biggest difference for our clients.